Chapter 25

  Stab, slash, chop; Cici woke up to a sweaty Kopius, mid-slash. The new Drills tab had a list of three basic moves as mentioned above. Kopius was attempting to string them all together but his flow was one jerky motion after another.

  After Quinn had disappeared, Kopius had gone over the picture book instructions in his Drills tab. Once he had looked through them he had attempted to sleep but lost that battle. Reluctantly he accepted that his sleepy-time was over and it wasn’t coming back.

  It was more boredom than any sense of responsibility when Kopius had focused on the Stab drill and started to mimic the pictured moves. With instructions to leave his interface visible, Kopius went through the steps.

  It made him stand like a fencer ready to start a match in a wide squatting fashion. Next he would lunge forward to stab, often tilting too much to one side or another and falling off. Things went smoother after he could bear the burning in his legs due to the awkward stance. Eventually he could stab while, essentially, keeping his balance. It wasn’t graceful, or pretty for that matter but, if someone looked close enough, they could spot incremental improvements.

  At some point he had lunged with the correct form because next to the word ‘Stab’ on his interface there appeared the number one. He tried to repeat the motion, failing at first but soon the number climbed. It stopped at thirty and Kopius was thankful for the break. Glancing at his Stamina bar; that thing looked like it needed a breather too.

  After the brief respite, Kopius returned to the Drills tab and new instructions. The illustrations showed the person switching their stance—putting their front foot in the back and visa-versa—as well as their sword hand and then starting again. The whole thing ended—with ‘Stab’ disappearing—after he had done thirty lunges using both hands; from both stances.

  Kopius was thankful for the colder temperatures of an early morning; by the time he had finished Stab, he was sweating bullets. Once the sun had broken the horizon, he was finishing the last part of Chop. The moment he had completed that Drill from both sides, a pop up notification had startled him.

  {NX: Finishing the Drill +.25 AKI & STB}

  “That wasn’t so hard,” Kopius tried to convince himself as he pounded more water. He felt accomplished, a rare feat on any planet. It wasn’t everyday he just up and finished an assignment without procrastinating it to death first. As he was finishing patting himself on the back, a blinking indicator pulsed on the side of his vision. He opened his profile and navigated the flashing light that was the Drills tab. He had a new chore.

  {NX: Drill-to do all forms together}

  “I can do that,” Kopius said to the picture book, illustrated instructions. He put his waterskin away, picked up his sword and got to practicing.

  “Leave some killing for the rest of us, lad!” Cici bellowed. The big man’s laugh following close behind. Kopius finished his spasmodic version of the motions before paying Cici any mind. Even though he had been awake for several hours at this point, the morning-person thing still seemed to be in effect.

  That’s weird, Kopius admitted. Then his stomach grumbled. Maybe I’m just hangry.

  Instead of encouraging Cici to engage with him, Kopius simply gave him a nod and then stepped behind the waist high brick wall to change clothes. He made a hand towel from his used shirt, wiping off residual sweat or loose dirt before putting the new ones on.

  The feeling of having on a fresh set of clothes lasted only until his dirty ones took up their own inventory slot in his ring, leaving Kopius with a singular empty space for the foreseeable future. His general annoyance at the world returned and things felt normal.

  Breakfast consisted of some dry granola-type bars and banana shaped fruit that crunched like an apple. Kopius gave Cici a rundown of his early morning adventures with Quinn, the big man chuckling when he described being given the Drills.

  Cici also noted that the drills Kopius was practicing were basically introductory sword forms that were often taught to young children using wooden swords.

  “Thanks for that clarification,” Kopius had replied dryly to a smiling, nodding Bard.

  Once their bellies were full and the space cleaned, they left.

  The path had a gradual, almost imperceptible incline. To the naked eye, most people wouldn’t be able to tell. To the unconditioned calf-muscles, that is a different story. Sometime around mid-day, Kopius began to feel the unfamiliar aches in places that only long distance walkers could understand.

  For all the searching through his virtual interface, he never found anything related to ‘distance traveled’ or total footsteps. These were both common staples for many video games, VR or otherwise. Something Cory often scoffed at for being useless, was now something Kopius would genuinely like to know. Needless to say, his dogs were barking and he flagged down Cici for an early lunch.

  They sat close to the ridge but not close enough for vertigo to kick in. They had to move off the trail a ways and it was worth the view. Cici pulled out some cheese and rolled meat that resembled dry salami and portioned them out while Kopius took off his boots to the delight of his feet. When Cici removed his instrument from his crotch bag but the horse hair he had purchased was in a pocket, he had to finally ask.

  “What’s up with that bag, man?” Kopius asked as he made himself comfortable on the ground.

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  “My Infannity pack?” Cici smiled, groping the sack with both hands.

  “Infannity?” Kopius wondered aloud. “Do you mean infinity?”

  “Infannity pack,” Cici insisted. “I don’t make up the names, lad. That’s for higher minds.”

  “I think you’d be surprised on that one,” Kopius said more to himself than to Cici.

  “It’s the Entertainment Edition too,” Cici beamed, now giving the pack the white glove treatment.

  “The what?” Kopius shot back in surprise.

  “This is a Third Issue, Silver Package, Entertainment Edition, Infannity Pack.” The big man stated, looking down upon his item in awe. “There are not many like it and this one is mine.”

  “It’s storage, right? Like my ring?”

  “That it is, my boy.”

  “Then why am I carrying all your shit?”

  “Well,” Cici laughed, “it’s not exactly like your precious there. Where you are limited by space, I am limited to, well, substance I suppose. The ‘Entertainment Edition’ means I can only store items meant to, uh, to–entertain people. Food, drink; anything related to those two like mugs or spoons. My Luna qualifies as well. Any instrument really. I have several.” He motioned to Kopius to ask if he’d like to see the others but was declined. “I am also burdened with a weight reduction rather than it being totally nullified.”

  “What's the reduction?” Kopius interrupted.

  “Half,” Cici answered. “And that was at an added cost!”

  “No doubt,” Kopius nodded in agreement. “Those aftermarket items can get pricey.”

  “Anyhow, the Silver Package allowed me to bind it,” the big man continued. “To be honest, next to Celeste here, I couldn’t get far without it. It’s keeping the two of us fed, yeah?”

  “No complaints here,” Kopius assured, knowing they’d long have died from food poisoning if Kopius had been in charge of cooking.

  “Horse hair doesn’t have entertainment value?” Kopius asked, pointing to the item that got this whole conversation started in the first place.

  “Oh,” Cici said with a slight chuckle. “It can, my friend. Yes, it can.” The big man absently used the bundled horse hair to lightly thrash at his thigh. Kopius raised his arm and snapped his fingers at the big man, bringing him back to reality. “Sorry lad, drifted off.”

  “Yeah you did. Go anywhere special?”

  “Have you ever needed a ‘stop’ word, lad? “ Cici asked absently.

  “Once,” Kopius cringed. “If it's the same as a ‘safe’ word.”

  “It's an agreed upon word that stops—” Cici went to explain.

  “Yeahyeahyeah, it's the same.” Kopius tried cutting him off quickly but it was too late, the memory was already playing in his mind.

  She was smart, she was cute, and she had a nursing degree; Cory had been smitten.

  Of course I’d let her milk me, he recalls thinking at the time, grossly misunderstanding the term.

  Why do we need a safe word? He had half-asked on the night of the incident.

  OMAHA! He had screamed, quickly gotten dressed, gathered his belongings, and never looked back.

  I still don’t know why the prostate had to get involved, he lamented, gazing out at the expanse of Escher Pass.

  Cici had opted to not restring his instrument at that moment and after Kopius had felt sufficiently rested, they returned to the path. With the Spires of Joatsu off in the distance, the pair headed west. Only two groups of travelers passed by them this day. One group was pulling a caravan and the other, two covered wagons. The latter had light security, prompting Cici to steer their walking to the side of the road.

  Besides that, the two continued to practice the wedding song. The more Cici mimicked the original tune the more he felt it could work. It had the right amount of dense melancholy mixed with a dash of silver-lining optimism; he felt it was almost enough to break someone's spirit.

  When the Bard insisted on adding words, a debate had ensued ultimately landing on the song being an instrumental only. Kopius had no doubts that the big guy could fill the song in with the right words, it was the time to do it that made the decision for them.

  About the same time the sun touched the horizon the two adventurers came to their first abandoned structure. The place looked like a two story, shantee town reject, guard tower. Made from a mixture of mud, sticks and large stones, the tower had a lean to one side and gave the impression that it would collapse in a stiff wind. Rusted sheets of metal littered the immediate area, leftover pieces of a now nonexistent roof.

  “She looks worse for wear,” Cici admitted as they approached. “But she has stood longer than Cawbachu.” To put emphasis on his statement, the big man gave the tower a mighty stomp like he was trying to kick a door open. The thing didn’t budge. Cici moved one of the metal roof sheets leaning against the tower to reveal an entrance and the two stepped inside.

  The inside of the tower was circular in shape and had a broken staircase that led to an upper platform. A small fire pit sat opposite the doorway, up against the wall on the other side. A few flat areas were noticeable, most likely where someone would sleep. Looking up to the sky with the tower walls in his peripheral gave him jailhouse vibes, so that view was short lived.

  Cici began to set up camp, so Kopius followed suit. They had stopped a little early, given that there was plenty of daylight to continue for an hour, maybe more. Not wanting to pass up the chance of a safer night's sleep, the two silently agreed that this would be a good place to rest. Kopius gathered wood and laid his cloak down where he was going to sleep. Once Cici set up his cooking space the two were left with little to do besides twiddling their thumbs.

  “Not like that, lad,” Cici instructed. He had dragged Kopius outside, against his will, to go through the sword forms that needed to be practiced. “You have all the grace of a teetering shrew! Your movement needs to be fluid, effortless. This is how you look.”

  The big man proceeded to do a spot on rendition of the robot dance, except he was mimicking sword moves. Kopius briefly pictured Cici walking the mean streets of any major city, cardboard and boombox in hand, looking for a dance battle.

  “It’s not a Stab; stop. Slash; stop. Chop; stop,” Cici continued to impersonate the moves. “All one motion.”

  Cici assumed the fencing position and then did the three forms in a quick and refined way. Next he did the same moves except at a much slower pace. As his stab finished, his wrist began to twist up and away, taking his arm with it before swooping back down and across in a slash. The slash then came back up and around in a looping fashion, his free hand joining the other on the hilt to bring the weapon down in a mighty chop. Kopius nodded in understanding; Cici performed it one more time to be sure.

  It was about the same time the last tendrils of light left for the day when Kopius finally performed the motion correctly. He was more relieved than happy when the number one showed up next to the Drill. It did not take much for his growing hunger and exhaustion to convince him to call it a day. He undoubtedly had twenty-nine more times to perform the act, given how the other Drills concluded, and that wasn’t going to be finished tonight. Nor was he going to do much of anything because after securing the entrance to the tower and eating; Kopius hit the sheets like someone had smothered him in chloroform.